Question : Best Method for Reporting on and Editing Large Amounts of Data

Hi all,

I am working in a University and I have written an application which is used to pull all Modules and any associated information from an Oracle Database and displays it on screen. Here is a screenshot of a module to give you an idea how much information is pulled per Module.

Sample-Module.JPG (123 KB) (File Type Details) 

Sample Module

There could be up to 4000 of these displayed at once. The current application was built in ASP.Net and I'm using a Repeater to display the information. This can be quite slow. I accept the fact that it's a very large amount of data to be pulling dynamically but I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions on another technology that would be more efficient? Also, the fields, layout etc. change quite regularly and ASP.Net does not seem to be best suited maintenance wise so I would hope that this technology would allow the application to be maintained more easily.

There is another requirement of this Book of Modules application...
I also allow the users (Module Owners) to login and edit certain details of their own module. This is the reason I went the .Net route rather than the likes of Crystal Reports. So again, the technology would need to allow for this

To summarise:

I need advice on which technologies to use to create an application that can:

1. Pull and display large amounts of data efficiently (Using a Web Services tier for security purposes)

2. Allow editing and Inserting\Updating of the database

3. Maintain application efficiently

4. Allow user to Export data to PDF (And maybe Word)

Advice on this would be very much appreciated,

All the best,

Beircheart

Answer : Best Method for Reporting on and Editing Large Amounts of Data

I don't know of a tool that has those capabilities.

You might get faster response from a reporting tool like Crystal for the display but Crystal and most reporting tools do not allow the user to edit the data so if they wanted to you would have to get the data again from the database.

mlmcc